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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by LaZodiac View Post
    I'm actually fairly sure one of his short stories is just "oh oops it was a black person".
    There's the one where the main protagonist researches his family history and why there's so many suicides and unexplained fires in it and finds out that his great-grandfather (or something along those lines) mated with an ape creature from Africa, so his bloodline isn't wholly human. At which point he tries to commit suicide and burn the house down.
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    There's the one where the main protagonist researches his family history and why there's so many suicides and unexplained fires in it and finds out that his great-grandfather (or something along those lines) mated with an ape creature from Africa, so his bloodline isn't wholly human. At which point he tries to commit suicide and burn the house down.
    Pffthaha okay so that's AWFUL but it's also...kind of hilarious if you think about it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Thrudd View Post
    There is plenty found in his stories as well. We've talked about a couple already and they are coming up in the collection being discussed right now. It's less in what specific role they play in the story, and more about how they are described and why they occupy those roles that the racism is revealed. It is not to do with capability, and more to do with how the author/narrator uses denigrating and dehumanizing language to refer to people that are not pure WASP and attributes their existence with a lack of or corruption of civilization and goodness in general. It is in the overall themes that weave through many stories of attributing "mixed breeds" and intermingling of races with immorality, doom, collapse and horror.
    My point still stands about the genre offaetting it. The ethnic characters don't just practice primitive brutal primitive religions that advocate cannibalism and human sacrifice, they practice brutal primitive religions that advocate cannibalism and human sacrifice and are also objectively correct.
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by LaZodiac View Post
    Pffthaha okay so that's AWFUL but it's also...kind of hilarious if you think about it.
    Because the implication seems to be that this keeps happening in this family?
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    My point still stands about the genre offaetting it. The ethnic characters don't just practice primitive brutal primitive religions that advocate cannibalism and human sacrifice, they practice brutal primitive religions that advocate cannibalism and human sacrifice and are also objectively correct.
    I don't think Lovecraft's nihilism and belief that civilization is doomed mean that his depictions are not racist: just because the stories express hopelessness and depict the "bad guys" winning doesn't negate his repeatedly stated revulsion with the "mongrel races". It can't just be seen as the opinion held by a specific fictional character, either, it is language and point of view which pervades multiple characters and stories, and in some cases the narrator's horror and revulsion is not just at something happening to which the "mongrel people" are involved, but at the very presence of those people. Lovecraft may have understood there was no stopping the waves of immigration and the inevitability of the "melting pot" diversification and interbreeding of people in his beloved country. But he did not like it one bit, it was a horror to him and represented the end of all that was good and decent.

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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by LaZodiac View Post
    Pffthaha okay so that's AWFUL but it's also...kind of hilarious if you think about it.
    And it's explicitly a great ape. And white. And there's a few more details which make it slightly less guffaw worthy. Or more, depending on how you want to look at it. I happen to like the story, just about short enough not to be a long grind. You can (and I did) literally skip somewhere on the order of 30-50 pages in the middle of "At the Mountains of Madness" and it makes no difference at all to the story. The man really needed an editor.
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by Winter_Wolf View Post
    And it's explicitly a great ape. And white. And there's a few more details which make it slightly less guffaw worthy. Or more, depending on how you want to look at it. I happen to like the story, just about short enough not to be a long grind. You can (and I did) literally skip somewhere on the order of 30-50 pages in the middle of "At the Mountains of Madness" and it makes no difference at all to the story. The man really needed an editor.
    In my opinion, Lovecraft's main strengths were in creative conceptual ideas and hitting a certain tone. You do not need a good story or good pacing for those to be successful elements.

    I generally think he was a pretty bad writer, actually, but he has had a big impact on the horror genre for good reason. He was the Steven King of his day.
    I write a horror blog in my spare time.

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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    I think the main problem lies in that he isn't racist in the modern sense of prejudice against someone of a different color, but in the old school racism towards someone of a different country or culture, so technically more general xenophobia. He wasn't necessarily afraid of people of African or Asian decent, or anyone non-white. But specifically anyone not his kind of white and exact culture.

    I've always saw this as a symptom of his terrible home life. I also always interpreted Shadow Over Innsmouth as a cautionary tale on not just migration, but especially trade with foreign entities, if you pay attention to the origins of the mixed bloodlines in the town. Though I still love the story.

    And while I don't agree with his way of thinking, I do appreciate that his hiding these themes in fantastic works shows that he must've at least understood that his opinions were controversial, and so he just tries to put forward his thoughts and not the specific prejudice behind them. And even though in this case he was wrong, the principal of being suspicious of unknown things isn't always entirely misplaced, at least to a more reasonable extent you should always be cautious in life, it doesn't really come across to me as a political thing but rather in me it helped foster a calm Batman-like paranoia that helps someone as scientificly minded as myself keep an open mind to all things.

    I always said that, "While Batman didn't grow up into a man that believes in vampires, if there was anything that suggested there might be vampire attacks in Gotham, you just know he would carry some garlic in his utility belt."
    Quote Originally Posted by Master of Aeons View Post
    I'd kill to own a sourcebook for this: Over 9000 pages, mostly filler.

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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by BeerMug Paladin View Post
    I generally think he was a pretty bad writer, actually, but he has had a big impact on the horror genre for good reason. He was the Steven King of his day.
    Yep, he died alone, relatively unknown by the world and penniless, just like Stephen Ki-- oh.

    Quote Originally Posted by MorgromTheOrc View Post
    I think the main problem lies in that he isn't racist in the modern sense of prejudice against someone of a different color, but in the old school racism towards someone of a different country or culture, so technically more general xenophobia. He wasn't necessarily afraid of people of African or Asian decent, or anyone non-white. But specifically anyone not his kind of white and exact culture.
    People equated ethnicities to races in that time. Either way, he was quite sure that miscegenation was a terrible idea, except when the groups of people who mixed bloodlines to create his ancestors did so, because he believed they created a master race. Which presumably he also believed wasn't just a retroactive justification for colonialism.

    He mellowed a little later but... Lovecraft also didn't particularly like people. Even his potential audience.

    We have millions who lack the intellectual independence, courage, and flexibility to get an artistic thrill out of a bizarre situation, and who enter sympathetically into a story only when it ignores the colour and vividness of actual human emotions and conventionally presents a simple plot based on artificial, ethically sugar-coated values and leading to a flat denouement which shall vindicate every current platitude and leave no mystery unexplained by the shallow comprehension of the most mediocre reader. That is the kind of public publishers confront, and only a fool or a rejection-venomed author could blame the publishers for a condition caused not by them but by the whole essence and historic tradition of our civilisation.

    Quote Originally Posted by MorgromTheOrc View Post
    And while I don't agree with his way of thinking, I do appreciate that his hiding these themes in fantastic works shows that he must've at least understood that his opinions were controversial, and so he just tries to put forward his thoughts and not the specific prejudice behind them.
    You may want to take a look at the correspondence he had with people. He wrote a lot of letters where he complained about, among other things, Chinese immigrants in New York City. Nothing I'm going to repeat.

    Also, wait until you get to "The Rats in the Walls."

    Quote Originally Posted by MorgromTheOrc View Post
    I always said that, "While Batman didn't grow up into a man that believes in vampires, if there was anything that suggested there might be vampire attacks in Gotham, you just know he would carry some garlic in his utility belt."
    There is more than one story where Batman fights Dracula. Aside from the direct-to-video animated movie The Batman vs Dracula, there was The Batman & Dracula trilogy of Elseworlds stories.

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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    There's some wonderful stretching and tip-toeing in the complete lovecraft edition I have. LIke how they say about The Horror of Red Hook:
    Though some readers may be put off by suspicions of racism.
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by KillingAScarab View Post
    Yep, he died alone, relatively unknown by the world and penniless, just like Stephen Ki-- oh.

    People equated ethnicities to races in that time. Either way, he was quite sure that miscegenation was a terrible idea, except when the groups of people who mixed bloodlines to create his ancestors did so, because he believed they created a master race. Which presumably he also believed wasn't just a retroactive justification for colonialism.

    He mellowed a little later but... Lovecraft also didn't particularly like people. Even his potential audience.




    You may want to take a look at the correspondence he had with people. He wrote a lot of letters where he complained about, among other things, Chinese immigrants in New York City. Nothing I'm going to repeat.

    Also, wait until you get to "The Rats in the Walls."

    There is more than one story where Batman fights Dracula. Aside from the direct-to-video animated movie The Batman vs Dracula, there was The Batman & Dracula trilogy of Elseworlds stories.
    I didn't mean that they didn't relate it to ethnicity, just that they cared equally about bloodlines within the same ethnicity. And as far as the correspondence, I was more than aware of that, I don't care what he chooses to do in letters to friends. How he presents himself to outside readers is what matters, and my points still stand there.

    Oh and on Batman, that's the main reason that the phrase works, Batman didn't grow up believing in the supernatural, but he was prepared anyways and it payed off. Incidentally the Batman vs. Vampires storylines are some of my favorite and the reason I chose them when I first said it years ago when describing to someone my outlook on life.
    Quote Originally Posted by Master of Aeons View Post
    I'd kill to own a sourcebook for this: Over 9000 pages, mostly filler.

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    Spoiler: The Festival
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    I was far from home, and the spell of the great eastern sea was upon me.
    Another great opening line. This time, our narrator is returning to his ancestral home at "Yuletide" to perform a ritual that that takes place once every century, a legend he has heard. We also get this line

    Mine were an old people (...) And they were strange, because they had come as dark furtive folk from opiate southern gardens of orchids, and had spoken another tongue before they learnt the tongue of the blue eyed fishers.
    Hmm. If not for the conversation just now, I probably wouldn't have noticed it. But anyway.
    The village is oddly silent for Christmas-time, but our narrator assumes the locals are too religious to celebrate. Somehow, our narrator has really really specific instructions as to which house to go to from this legend, and he knocks on the lit up one. It's answered by an old man that seems to be mute, but carries a wax tablet to communicate.

    He's brought to a damp, cold waiting room and begins to get nervous. The mute old man, he realises, seems to actually be wearing a mask that looks like skin. The books in the waiting room are all old and mouldy, and include our old friend the Necronomicon, which apparently everyone recognises but no one knows much about, translated to Latin. Our narrator apparently flicks through it while he's waiting, because ancient tomes by mad poets make for great waiting room reads. At eleven the old man puts on a hooded cloak and brings our narrator out, to where everyone in town is assembling in similar dress. They go to the church, and our narrator waits for everyone else to go in before following as he doesn't want to be last inside. They end up going into a deep cavern and as far as a river. There are giant mushrooms and a pillar of green fire that seems to be the subject of the worship.

    Someone playing an instrument unseen changes their tune, and summons your standard Lovecraftian indescribable creatures, although webbed feet and wings are mentioned.

    Mr. Old mute man tries to get our narrator to get on a monster, and he hesitates. The man tries to prove he is who he is by using a watch the narrator knows to be buried with an ancestor in 1698. Eventually, one of the monsters gets restless and when the man moves to stop it, his mask falls away.
    Whatever is under it triggers our narrator to jump into the river to escape. He comes to in the local hospital, in a a modern town, after having apparently fallen over cliffs and into the sea the night before. He gets moved to an Asylum in Arkham, where he actually is well cared for, surprisingly enough. Then again, they give him a copy of the Necronomicon, and we get our first quote. It's too long to reproduce, but the gist is that mysterious tunnels are bad places, when wizards die they corrupt the graves and
    things learn to walk that ought to crawl
    So, what do we make of this? Our narrator is specifically lured to this town to perform some kind of ritual, he does not seek it out intentionally or randomly get unlucky like the others so far. He is rather well informed on his family history, being aware that
    They had hanged four kinsmen of mine for witchcraft in 1692
    , which is a long time to remember something like that. He remembers this legend, which
    only the poor and the lonely remember
    So my best guess for what happened, insofar as you can understand a Lovecraft story, is that those hanged wizards were buried, and either resurrected themselves or some demon or monster inhabited their bodies. And they need our narrator for... a new body? Old mute man's mask passes muster at first glance but the narrator sees through it, and becomes increasingly concerned as time passes. Actual human skin?

    Blind flight seems to serve our narrators well in these stories, but this guy holds together fairly well, he makes sure he goes last, which saves his life as the rest of the people aren't around to stop him. He's a little more careful about his personal safety than usual, although maybe he has more cause to be suspicious than the others.


    Next up, we have the one, the only Call of Cthulhu,, folks! Looking forward to it.

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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by Sapphire Guard View Post
    What I have isn't that extensive, but I since it's probably in the public domain I can find some of the rest on the internet. But anyway, sorry for taking so long to read five pages.
    http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/ they are available yes
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sapphire Guard View Post
    Next up, we have the one, the only Call of Cthulhu,, folks! Looking forward to it.
    Oh, were you not reading "Dagon & other Macabre Tales"? When you said you had a compilation of short stories that started with Dagon, I assumed that's what it was. Unless you're just skipping over most of it to get to Cthulhu, which is understandable. If you're going to get around to the novella "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath", you might also want to go back to the collection and read "Polaris", "The White Ship", "The Cats of Ulthar", "Celephais", "The Other Gods", and "The Quest of Iranon".

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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    If you'd like greater insight into Lovecraft's work, why not ask the man himself?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Thrudd View Post
    Oh, were you not reading "Dagon & other Macabre Tales"? When you said you had a compilation of short stories that started with Dagon, I assumed that's what it was. Unless you're just skipping over most of it to get to Cthulhu, which is understandable. If you're going to get around to the novella "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath", you might also want to go back to the collection and read "Polaris", "The White Ship", "The Cats of Ulthar", "Celephais", "The Other Gods", and "The Quest of Iranon".
    No, I'm reading this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...om_search=true

    (Anyone know why the buttons (quote, spoilers, etc) are gone? Is that just me?

    Anyway, onward. I understand so many references now!

    Spoiler: Call of Cthulhu
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    The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents
    Nice. He's great about opening lines. This opener is all about how the narrator doesn't want anything to understand the things he has, which is why he is writing such a detailed account of it.

    Our narrator was the executor of the estate of a mysteriously dying professor, and came across a lock box in his personal effects, which turned out to be about a period in 1925 where insanity spiked among poets and artists. It came to his attention when a student came to him with strange dreams about weird geometry and the phrase 'Cthulhu fhtagn'

    Lovecraft seems to really love the word 'Cyclopean', it comes up a fair bit.

    The professor took an interest in this because in 1908 he heard from a police officer about a human sacrifice cult that were chanting some of those words. The cultists, and I am now seeing some of this racism you've been talking about, was broken by the police after some disappearances, and some of them explained.

    It's always interesting to see the original source of something and the pop culture version. Chtulhu isn't reallly a great old one, he's the Saren to their Reapers, something like a herald or a gatekeeper.

    Our narrator thinks this is weird, but doesn't pay much heed until he sees an article about a mariner in New Zealand, carrying a stone idol of Cthulhu.

    According to the survivor, they came across a crew of evil looking people and were fired on when they refused to turn back, so they killed them all and landed on a nearby island where something killed all of them. The survivor subsequently got the hell out of dodge and moved back to his native Oslo, so our narrator follows. He has also died mysteriously by then while leaving a long account of his experiences, which our narrator takes.

    This island is deeply unsettling to the adventurers, but they press on anyway and find a mysterious door with the depiction of the idol on it. They semi accidentally open it, and darkness that is a 'positive quality', which is a really great description, I have to admit, it's a thing in itself rather than the absence of light. Something else also comes out,which isn't described beyond being gelatinous and green, and two of the crew fail their sanity rolls just looking at it. The rest flee, and three die of clawing, while one man just falls. They reach the boat, but Cthulhu can swim, and after the other guy fails his sanity check the last sailor elects to ram Cthulhu with the ship. Chtulhu bursts apart on impact, in that scene you sometimes see in vs threads. It reforms a few seconds later, but by the then the steamship has put too much distance between them. It must have done something, though, because it then doesn't take over the world.

    The narrator then decides to leave his account in the professor's box, because even though Cthulu's revival failed, the cult has assassinated several people that know too much and he decides he's probably next, so he ends with a note to his executor not to investigate this document if they find it.

    Like I said already, the most interesting thing about this is how different pop culture Cthulhu is from Lovecraft Cthulhu. This story is a big green gelatinous thing with claws, sometimes described as a squid dragon, that explodes on heavy impact and regenerates. It needs to be unsealed, but didn't fully break free this time for unclear reasons, maybe the steamboat knocked it out or broke its concentration or something. Several of the sailors make their sanity rolls in its presence, although that just means they get clawed to death.



    Next, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    HPL is good at opening lines. The execution doesn't always pan out, but he can pull off a great opening.

    By the way, I have not seen that collection before. I suspect the newer collections are just recombining partial lists of works to milk the most out of a dead man's writing. But it could be handy to all be on the same literal page when talking specifics (page X, lines Y-Z). I should dig out my Necronomicon collected works and read The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    From what I understand, I think Cthulhu went outside, looked around and said "nope, not time yet." and went back to wait for the stars to be right for the Great Old Ones' return.

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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    The equivalent I always use is this.

    Cthulhu woke up at the middle of the night because some annoying buzzing, bleary-eyed he stepped on some cockroach, which really annoy and inconvenience him, but he looked at his alarm clock, notice it's still 3 am, and went back to sleep.
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by Winter_Wolf View Post
    HPL is good at opening lines. The execution doesn't always pan out, but he can pull off a great opening.

    By the way, I have not seen that collection before. I suspect the newer collections are just recombining partial lists of works to milk the most out of a dead man's writing.
    Yup, probably.

    From what I understand, I think Cthulhu went outside, looked around and said "nope, not time yet." and went back to wait for the stars to be right for the Great Old Ones' return.
    The equivalent I always use is this.

    Cthulhu woke up at the middle of the night because some annoying buzzing, bleary-eyed he stepped on some cockroach, which really annoy and inconvenience him, but he looked at his alarm clock, notice it's still 3 am, and went back to sleep.
    I do like these interpretations, but he also did seem to be sending out the dream summons deliberately.

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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Maybe you would be interested to check out a new game Lovercraft Tales being developed. It's based loosely on "Whisperer in darkness". You can play a free demo and support the production of the game right now.

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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by Winter_Wolf View Post
    And it's explicitly a great ape. And white.
    This is making me imagine a videogame called "Honkey Kong"

    edit:
    can I say that? the filter doesn't censor it.
    Last edited by Bohandas; 2016-09-09 at 08:52 PM.
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by An Enemy Spy View Post
    From what I understand, I think Cthulhu went outside, looked around and said "nope, not time yet." and went back to wait for the stars to be right for the Great Old Ones' return.
    Or got pulled back because the stars were not yet right

    Quote Originally Posted by Sapphire Guard View Post
    Lovecraft seems to really love the word 'Cyclopean', it comes up a fair bit.
    Also "eldritch" and "antediluvian"
    Last edited by Bohandas; 2016-09-09 at 08:46 PM.
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    This is making me imagine a videogame called "Honkey Kong"

    edit:
    can I say that? the filter doesn't censor it.
    Man that's funny. If he was wearing a cowboy hat and carrying an acoustic guitar he could be called "Honkey Tonk Kong".

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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Like I said already, the most interesting thing about this is how different pop culture Cthulhu is from Lovecraft Cthulhu. This story is a big green gelatinous thing with claws, sometimes described as a squid dragon, that explodes on heavy impact and regenerates. It needs to be unsealed, but didn't fully break free this time for unclear reasons, maybe the steamboat knocked it out or broke its concentration or something. Several of the sailors make their sanity rolls in its presence, although that just means they get clawed to death.

    There is actually a bit more. Lovecraft made a sketch of what he imagined Cthulhu to look like, most depictions are based on that.

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  26. - Top - End - #56
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    That honestly looks like something secured from the only surviving journal of a man who stabbed twenty people yelling about squid dragon, before disappearing mysteriously, leaving a house fire.
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  27. - Top - End - #57
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by Fri View Post
    That honestly looks like something secured from the only surviving journal of a man who stabbed twenty people yelling about squid dragon, before disappearing mysteriously, leaving a house fire.
    Mission accompanied, then. From HPL's point of view anyway.
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  28. - Top - End - #58
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Spoiler: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, part 1
    Show


    This one gets pretty long, so I might have to break it up. But first, an announcement.

    This one was really, really good. I've been a bit snarky up to now about how many of these follow a formula, and this one kind of does as well, but the reason for that is because a lot of thought has gone into how something like this would work.

    Charles Dexter Ward was (extremely reluctantly) committed to an insane asylum in Providence by his family due to an unprecedented condition that befell the hapless soul. His body aged, digestion atrophied, a mysterious mole appeared, and various other odd stuff. He became extremely intelligent, but suffered wide ranging memory loss. He mysteriously escaped the asylum after a visit from the family doctor, leaving behind a strange blue powder. He had been a history buff before this, until suddenly manifesting a detailed knowledge of the past history and becoming more interested in the modern day.

    In his historical efforts, he had begun dabbling in the... occult, shall we say, and in particular sought out the grave of an ancestor in the 1700s, and eventually found some of his papers. This ancestor, one Joseph Corwen, arrived from Salem. Ward, researching his own family history, discovered that his ancestor had suffered some kind of disgrace, to the point where his widow used her maiden name and the rest of the town tried to expunge him from history.

    Back in the 1700s, Corwen fled witchhunts and settled in Providence. He didn't appear to age after his arrival, which raised an eyebrow or two after the first few decades. He hung around in graveyards a bit more than average, and seemed to dabble in alchemy. His neighbours complained of hearing screams, and vast herds of livestock that seemed to disappear. He ran a kind of shipping empire, but not many of the crew seemed to stay long and a lot of his staff seem to hate him. Fifty years after his arrival, he's basically an outcast, and tries to keep it by donating to the town and attending church and such, which works somewhat as his sailors start to survive. His imported slaves also disappear at a high rate, although this is not known at the time. By this point the only people that will work for him are blackmailed or held in debt. Because he needed to stay in the towns good graces, Corwen then decided to marry a local eighteen year old, forcing her to break a previous engagement with a sailor, Ezra Weeden, who starts investigating him properly.

    Along with a friend they discover that Corwen has built a series of catacombs, inside which interrogations seem to be happening. During a flood one year, a giant heap of bones are unearthed.
    Eventually, Weeden and his friend gather enough to take to the town worthies, and they decide something has to be done about Corwen.

    TO BE CONTINUED


    The first half of this story is pretty slow, but what's amazing about this one is how intelligent everyone is. Corwen does the best he can, but he can't reasonably hide the extent of his operations or his agelessness. This isn't formula for the sake of following formula, this is formulsa because that is how something like this would actually work. Apparently Lovecraft himself hated this one, but I really enjoyed it.

  29. - Top - End - #59
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Quote Originally Posted by Sapphire Guard View Post
    Spoiler: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, part 1
    Show


    This one gets pretty long, so I might have to break it up. But first, an announcement.

    This one was really, really good. I've been a bit snarky up to now about how many of these follow a formula, and this one kind of does as well, but the reason for that is because a lot of thought has gone into how something like this would work.

    Charles Dexter Ward was (extremely reluctantly) committed to an insane asylum in Providence by his family due to an unprecedented condition that befell the hapless soul. His body aged, digestion atrophied, a mysterious mole appeared, and various other odd stuff. He became extremely intelligent, but suffered wide ranging memory loss. He mysteriously escaped the asylum after a visit from the family doctor, leaving behind a strange blue powder. He had been a history buff before this, until suddenly manifesting a detailed knowledge of the past history and becoming more interested in the modern day.

    In his historical efforts, he had begun dabbling in the... occult, shall we say, and in particular sought out the grave of an ancestor in the 1700s, and eventually found some of his papers. This ancestor, one Joseph Corwen, arrived from Salem. Ward, researching his own family history, discovered that his ancestor had suffered some kind of disgrace, to the point where his widow used her maiden name and the rest of the town tried to expunge him from history.

    Back in the 1700s, Corwen fled witchhunts and settled in Providence. He didn't appear to age after his arrival, which raised an eyebrow or two after the first few decades. He hung around in graveyards a bit more than average, and seemed to dabble in alchemy. His neighbours complained of hearing screams, and vast herds of livestock that seemed to disappear. He ran a kind of shipping empire, but not many of the crew seemed to stay long and a lot of his staff seem to hate him. Fifty years after his arrival, he's basically an outcast, and tries to keep it by donating to the town and attending church and such, which works somewhat as his sailors start to survive. His imported slaves also disappear at a high rate, although this is not known at the time. By this point the only people that will work for him are blackmailed or held in debt. Because he needed to stay in the towns good graces, Corwen then decided to marry a local eighteen year old, forcing her to break a previous engagement with a sailor, Ezra Weeden, who starts investigating him properly.

    Along with a friend they discover that Corwen has built a series of catacombs, inside which interrogations seem to be happening. During a flood one year, a giant heap of bones are unearthed.
    Eventually, Weeden and his friend gather enough to take to the town worthies, and they decide something has to be done about Corwen.

    TO BE CONTINUED


    The first half of this story is pretty slow, but what's amazing about this one is how intelligent everyone is. Corwen does the best he can, but he can't reasonably hide the extent of his operations or his agelessness. This isn't formula for the sake of following formula, this is formulsa because that is how something like this would actually work. Apparently Lovecraft himself hated this one, but I really enjoyed it.
    I have this weird feeling that there's a wrecked ship called the Charles Dexter Ward in a game I've played recently?

    Maybe it was in a book? I'm alternating between thinking it might've been in a spaceship in a book, or an actual ship in Far Harbor or Sunless Sea or something; honestly either could be making the reference.

    EDIT: (I looked it up, it was a short Elizabeth Bear story I read about a year ago; I remember it being pretty decent)
    Last edited by kraftcheese; 2016-10-02 at 08:01 AM.
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  30. - Top - End - #60
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    Default Re: Let's Read:Works of HP Lovecraft

    Spoiler: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, part 2
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    Sorry about my last post, it ran on for quite a while and didn't say much.

    When last I posted, the town had just been notified about the strange activities of Curwen, and the most polite, genteel, careful witchhunt in literature ensued. Something flees from Curwen's farm, and it turns out to be the fresh body of a man that died fifty years before. Eventually, a raiding party of a good hundred sailors sets out to bring Curwen to justice. We don't see what happens, but the people that come back bear the hallmarks of having seen eldritch stuff.Another account shows 'flaming things' which are felled by the attackers, but no one who was actually in the raiding force would ever speak of it again. By mutual agreement the town did its best to erase him from memory.

    Back in the 1920s, Mr Charles Dexter Ward uncovers a portrait of Curwen, which happens to look exactly like him except for a scar on his nose, and eventually starts looking for his ancestor's grave. Eventually, of course, he finds it, and on Good Friday, (which clearly has no significance) a mysterious ritual takes place in his house, after which he recovers his sanity somewhat.

    Ezra Weeden's grave is mysteriously defaced, and a mysterious monster begins attacking people. At the same time, Ward begins associating with a mysteriously silent man named Dr. Allen, who has a large black beard that makes him difficult to identify.

    One Day, the family doctor gets a letter from Charles, in which he feels under threat, and his father hired detectives to prevent him, and that Dr. Allen must be shot on sight and dissolved in acid (but not burned), and to come immediately and see him. The Doctor does, and he is not at home. Apparently, he was heard on the phone pleading with someone, and then entered the house, and then there were screams and choking noises. Nothing out of the ordinary.


    Sorry, not much substantial here either. Join me next time, where I will actually say something of note, hopefully. There's a lot I can't talk about until it's fully explained, but I really liked this story, it was well thought out, the nature of how things happened and the obstacles worked, because the genre tropes don't exist yet so all the characters are confused and slowly figuring things out.

    I have this weird feeling that there's a wrecked ship called the Charles Dexter Ward in a game I've played recently?]
    Did everything go horribly wrong aboard?

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